Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
but to the rich ones as well. Also, some of the problems facing the world,
such as global warming and ozone depletion, stem from high consumption
in the richer countries. Moreover, the international community allows
and facilitates the access to cleaner technologies and lessons learned from
developed countries by less-developed ones (IBRD, 1992).
Third, the nature of environmental protection, being a public good,
makes it dii cult to control due to transboundary and free-rider ef ects. A
public good is dei ned as 'non-rival and non-excludable in use' (Common,
1995, p. 129). The transboundary ef ect results when environmental deg-
radation crosses national boundaries. This can take a number of forms.
The i rst is where neighbouring countries share a common resource and
the action of one country af ects the others. Examples that fall in this
category are acid rain and the management of regional seas and interna-
tional rivers. The second is when one country's action af ects the world's
global environmental resources, such as the atmosphere, and thereby has
an ef ect on all of the other countries. Examples that fall in this category
are ozone layer depletion and global warming. The third form is when
resources belonging to one country have high values for the international
community. Examples that fall in this category are tropical rainforests,
individual species and special ecological habitats. The free-rider ef ect,
where countries have the incentives to take advantage of the ef orts of
others to provide the public good without paying their share or contribut-
ing to this step, also necessitates the existence of institutions and policies
(IBRD, 1992; Goodstein, 1999; Stavins, 2000).
Fourth, the international community negotiates international environ-
mental standards and sets them based on common principles and rules of
collaboration among the various countries. It gives proper weight to the
interests of all countries, including the poor and politically weak ones. In
addition, it monitors, enforces and abides by multilateral agreements on
environmental matters (Congleton, 1992; IBRD, 1992).
The relationship between economic development and environmental
pollution is complex as it involves a lot of dif erent interrelated factors.
Among these factors are: the size of the economy, the sectoral structure,
the age of technology, the public demand for environmental quality and
the level and quality of environmental protection expenditure (Goodstein,
1999). However, the relationship mainly centres around i ve questions.
First, does the EKC relationship between income and environmental deg-
radation exist, and if yes, what is the income turning point? Second, what
are the other factors af ecting this relationship, such as population growth/
density, international trade, policy, geography and income distribution and
what roles do they play? Third, how reliable are the results derived from
cross-sectional country or panel data in forecasting the environmental
